


Housing Sherlock

by irisbleufic



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-21
Updated: 2013-11-21
Packaged: 2018-01-02 05:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1053156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Mike knows the type: arrogant, aloof, awkwardly handsome.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Housing Sherlock

**Author's Note:**

> Written for **thegameison_sh** Challenge #3 in December of 2010.

The first time Mike Stamford meets Sherlock Holmes, it's in the summer of 2005 at a forensics conference hosted by Bart's. The 7 July bombings are only a few weeks gone, and everyone is on edge. Mike has a syllabus conundrum, and he's been told this Holmes fellow can fix it. Reputation gets you a long way at Bart's.

The tall, sharply-dressed young man is frowning at Molly Hooper, the brightest student in her year, while she witters at him nervously about a paper session at which they were both obviously present. He isn't in the least interested in what she's saying.

Mike knows the type: arrogant, aloof, awkwardly handsome. And very likely gay.

“I'd have you over for a cup of tea and a continuation of this discussion,” says Holmes, somehow insincere and apologetic all at once, “but I've just been evicted. Not my finest moment at all.”

Molly's pretty features crumple. “Oh, that's dreadful! What are you going to do?”

“Avoid staying with my brother at all costs,” Holmes mutters.

“I couldn't help but overhear,” Mike says, sidling up to them. “You need housing?” 

Holmes seems grateful to have a body more or less between his shoulder and Molly's.

“Yes. My landlord objected to some lab-work I was undertaking in the garden. He seemed to think I might have had something to do with all those messy pyrotechnics.”

“This is Professor Stamford,” says Molly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Sherlock Holmes,” says the young man, offering Mike his hand. “You don't happen to know of a room going for cheap, do you?”

“I do, as it happens,” Mike says. “My flatmate just left to move in with his girlfriend.”

Holmes— _Sherlock_ , Mike tells himself; the lad must be ten years his junior, surely—raises his eyebrows with an air of cool, yet genuine surprise. It suits him.

“You hardly know me. Or my experiments. For all you know, I _might_ be a bomber.”

Molly giggles behind her hand. It's simultaneously wrong and dreadfully appropriate.

“He's a regular in the mortuary,” she says. “You ought to see what he did—”

“Molly, thank you,” says Sherlock, “but Mike and I are about to grab a cup of coffee in the canteen. We have business to discuss, it would seem. If that's all right with you?”

 _Of course it is_ , Mike thinks, dazed. _Blokes like you get whatever you want, from whomever you want, and little wonder, too_.

Three hours later, Sherlock is moving his alarming collection of possessions into the empty bedroom up the hall from Mike's. Twelve hours later, the violin won't stop.

Forty-eight hours later, Mike comes home to a house full of Scotland Yard and Sherlock having an impressive stand-off with one Detective Inspector Lestrade. Judging by the way they address each other, it's not the first time, and Mike has the sinking feeling it won't be the last, either.

The first time a partially dissected human gallbladder turns up in the fridge, Mike and Sherlock have words. Sherlock trounces him soundly and, the next week, brings home a blackened lung. Mike and _Molly_ have words, but it's no use. 

Sherlock takes whatever he pleases, and the poor girl doesn't have the heart to stop him, because he's stolen _that_ , too. Mike ends up patting her shoulder all too often.

Six weeks later, Mike thinks he's found Sherlock a suitable new flatmate: nerdy, bisexual, and a chess prodigy to boot. After only five days, Sherlock is back on Mike's doorstep, and the process begins anew with little to no success.

It continues for the next four years. 

Seven flatmates later, Sherlock spends three miserable months with his brother and ends up at Mike's almost every evening. Mike doesn't mind the company, as at least said company isn't filling his house with atrocities both medical and non-medical.

Now, one bright morning out of the blue, Mike is smiling at John Watson over lukewarm Criterion coffee. Strange, that he'd never noticed before what it would take, or, indeed, what he should've been looking for on Sherlock's behalf from the start.

Mike does, after all, know the type: bloody barking mad, but worth it in the end.


End file.
